She thought back to what he had said. /I could make you very happy./ It was something men said then, when they were trying to persuade you, and that was what they meant. It seemed rash and sweeping to her, dazzling but *presumptuous*. She had to try to see herself, then, as somebody who could be /made happy/. The whole worrying, striving, complicated bundle of her -- was that something that could just be picked up and /made happy/?
The world has its own ways of treating us like what we will never be, but want to be. It relinquishes its grip on our souls while lulling us with the songs of freedom and conquest of beauty. It magnifies every tiny bit of something useless over an unfathomable presence of humanity. And we all waste the whole of our lives standing in queue for gaining its attention to be abdicated as if we never existed in the eyes of our fellow men.
Along with people in other creative professions, such as artists and musicians, many scientists experience this transcendence. I do so every day. For one, it's impossible to look an ape in the eye and not see oneself. There are other animals with frontally oriented eyes, but none that give you the shock of recognition of the ape's. Looking back at you is not so much an animal but a personality as solid and willful as yourself.
Along with people in other creative professions, such as artists and musicians, many scientists experience this transcendence. I do so every day. For one, it's impossible to look an ape in the eye and not see oneself. There are other animals with frontally oriented eyes, but none that give you the shock of recognitions of the ape's. Looking back at you is not so much an animal but a personality as solid and willful as yourself.
I keep everything hidden because there's nothing about my true self that anyone likes. I'm not difficult, Sebastian. I'm the easiest person around. I don't belong, and I spend all my time pretending I do. Sometimes I get weary of it, and that makes me angry.It's not fair to the people around me when I lose my temper. I say awful things when I'm angry. But it's not fair to me, either, that I was made this way.
By identifying with a particular name that belongs to a particular body and mind, the self begins the process of creating a separate identity. Add in a complex jumble of ideas, beliefs, and opinions, along with some selective and often painful memories with which to create a past to identify with, as well as the raw emotional energy to hold it all together, and before you know it, you've got a very convincing - though divided - self.
The ego is as you think of yourself. You in relation to all the commitments of your life, as you understand them. The self is the whole range of possibilities that you've never even thought of. And you're stuck with you're past when you're stuck with the ego. Because if all you know about yourself is what you found out about yourself, well, that already happened. The self is a whole field of potentialities to come through.
There IS a better future for you! Get rid of that negative and defeated attitude. Stop tearing yourself down and learn to build yourself up. Speak positively about yourself. If you’re not satisfied with who you are and where you’re at in your life, have the courage to make a change and be a person that you can be proud of. Change can be scary, but change for the better is very rewarding in the end. You can do it! Do it for YOU.
To understand God we must understand ourselves. If I give you an apple and ask you, “What is that?” you reply, “An apple.”“How do you know it’s an apple?”“Because it just is.”“How did it get to be an apple?”“It came from an apple.”“Exactly. So when I ask you, ‘What are you?’ you can honestly say, ‘I am a child of God because I came from God.
I'm persnickety," I confessed. "Not, incidentally, to the point of being snarly. But still. Delightful and persnickety are not a common blend." "Do you want to know why I never married?" "The question wasn't at the top of my list," I admitted. The old woman made me meet her eye. "Listen to me; I never married because I was easily bored. It's an awful, self-defeating trait to have. It is much better to be too easily interested.
What is it we are questing for? It is the fulfillment of that which is potential in each of us. Questing for it is not an ego trip; it is an adventure to bring into fulfillment your gift to the world, which is yourself. There is nothing you can do that's more important than being fulfilled. You become a sign, you become a signal, transparent to transcendence; in this way you will find, live, become a realization of your own personal myth.
And when you reach the place where this understanding overtakes you; that there is no one in the world that will ever love you with the force and power you can love yourself with. That no saviour in the form of a spouse or best friend is coming to make you complete and that you are your own saviour, your own best friend and perhaps the only saviour and best friend you will have, you will soar on wings of eagles and amazing things will happen.
We must all allow ourselves the fantasy of projection from time to time, a chance to clothe ourselves in the imaginary gowns and tails of what has never been and never will be. This gives some polish to our tarnished lives, and sometimes we may choose one dream over another, and in the choosing find some respite from ordinary sadness. After all, we, none of us, can ever untangle the knot of fictions that make up that wobbly thing we call a self.
I was driven to reflect deeply and inveterately on that hard law of life, which lies at the root of religion and is one of the most plentiful springs of distress. Though so profound a double-dealer, I was in no sense a hypocrite; both sides of me were in dead earnest; I was no more myself when I laid aside restraint and plunged in shame, than when I laboured, in the eye of day, at the futherance of knowledge or the relief of sorrow and suffering.
Knowledge of self ought to be the great project of our lives. Knowing ourselves we will know others. Only by knowing ourselves can we begin to undo the madness we unleash on the world in our wars, our destruction of the environment, our divisions, our desire to dominate others, the poverty we create and exploit. Only through self-knowledge can we reverse the damage we do with all the worldly knowledge we have, which has been only a higher ignorance.
